Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting more traffic is add great content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to attract new visitors automatically when you begin publishing content to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are researching every advantage they believe will get better results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has an immediate competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here is a simple way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is more labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
A Semi-True Story …
All was going well in the widget-making assembly line when the equipment suddenly ground to a complete stop.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and, without uttering a word, immediately walked towards the main control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for less than 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer and made a gentle tap near the bottom-right edge of the unit.
Immediately, everything returned to normal.
The plant manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors consistently to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although the solution to many problems is often ridiculously simple in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than just installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up to achieve desired results
- Which settings you need to configure to ensure that things will function as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a plugin, tweaking some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your web server that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web-hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your business can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like configuring spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites.
Configuring External Sites
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all of your content will get posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external services to your configuration, content pointing back to your website will be automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content receives exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with useful information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account has been set up, use this information to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, traffic monitoring information can be easily integrated with WordPress using a plugin and and fed to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site details with Bing Webmaster Tools, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up before you can configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are many different platforms you can incorporate into your own web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section includes only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(Notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify various update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, go here: How To Configure WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to increase traffic
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is immune from being attacked by hackers.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bots and hackers.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easy for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugin)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website with WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social features to your site with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social share plugins let you specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring Settings – WP Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your site, some themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any type of business online (or plan to), it’s important that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Categories And Tags
WordPress post categories & tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Post categories help search engines index your web pages, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your website or blog to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Only search engines can understand an XML sitemap. Although Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When visitors type in the wrong web address or click on an invalid hyperlink, they are greeted with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be configured into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is publish great content consistently to automatically begin bringing web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively with a WordPress website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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